Farmers Appeal To Supreme Court On Bay Plan

BERLIN — Farmers across the Eastern Shore this month joined a growing coalition of farmers and developers in lobbying the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling that allows the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to micromanage land-use decisions along the Chesapeake Bay.

The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) last week added its name to a challenge of the EPA’s proposed Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, which encourages Eastern Shore counties and other counties in Maryland and throughout the watershed to closely follow guidelines to set pollution limits that would restore water quality in local rivers, streams and other tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay.

While environmental advocacy groups call the blueprint a pathway to a restored Chesapeake, farmers, developers and some local jurisdictions view it as an attempt by the federal government, through the EPA, to micromanage local land use and development decisions under the guise of the Clean Water Act. The AFBF, a coalition of local farming advocacy groups in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, along with the National Association of Homebuilders, has challenged the EPA’s blueprint for the Chesapeake Bay and has been denied at different levels of the federal court system. Last week, the coalition petitioned the Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision on the blueprint, which it believes “opens the door for dramatic expansion of federal power and must be overturned.”

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